ISEE Special Collections

ISEE welcomes donations to our Special Collections section. If you would like to discuss contributing materials to the archive, please email ISEE at enviroethics@hotmail.com. We are interested in preserving unpublished archival and ephemeral material on all aspects of environmental ethics and philosophy.

The Crowley/Deep Ecology Controversy (2006-2008)

Thomas Crowley, undergraduate at Yale University in 2006, was a student in Holmes Rolston’s Environmental Ethics Class there fall 2005. He took a special interest in Arne Naess and the deep ecology movement, did a tutorial with Rolston spring 2006, and then went to visit Naess summer 2006. A report of his trip was published in the ISEE Newsletter, volume 17, no. 3 Fall 2006, pp. 23-25. Needless to say, Crowley’s report generated heated discussion on the significance and legacy of Arne Naess and the deep ecology movement, culminating in a historically situated reassessment of deep ecology by George Sessions. Though concern was raised about the appropriateness of publishing both Crowley’s report and responses to it, the exchange clearly has historical and intellectual significance.

George SessionsEcophilosophy Newsletters1976-1984

The Ecophilosophy Newsletters were originally circulated informally to between five and six dozen recipients and analyzed the environmental thought of the 1970s and 1980s by generally advocating deep ecology. The six volume set includes newsletters 1-6 from April 1976, May 1979, April 1981, May 1982, May 1983, and May 1984. Many thanks to David R. Keller for compiling these.

"Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?" —Henry David Thoreau